Start looking around for facts and figures and stories about a topic you'll think interesting, and, sure as hell, you'll stumble on a major controversy boiling in the background. Such is it with home birthing.

Human history would reveal the many, perhaps hundreds of ways babies have come into this world over the millennia. Most of them would likely NOT have involved hospitalization, particularly regular prenatal visits to a medical professional.

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After years of "professionalization" and “medicalization” of the entire parenting process from conception through delivery, many families, say, women, are opting for a simpler method, in the home with a successor to the old days of midwifery, the modern, professional midwife, or licensed midwife, or doula.

The medical profession appears pretty unhappy over this turn of events and is arguing against home birthing for all the reasons medical intervention was introduced to begin with decades ago: it’s essentially the only really safe way to deliver and, in that setting, all the options for emergency deliveries are close at hand.

There’s the rub and that’s what TruthToTell’s ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN will explore with advocates, hopefully from all sides of this controversy, much of which has landed in the halls of state capitols and in the medical journals, especially those of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologyand theAMA. But midwives and home birthing advocates have successfully pushed for laws allowing the home birthing of children and still have access to and coverage for emergency medical procedures and pediatric follow-up care for infants. Join us Monday morning for this fascinating discussion.

The junkiest of us political junkies can't help but dissect the stunning outcomes of the 2010 election, especially Minnesota's swing to a Republican majority in both houses of the state legislature. This junkie actually thought that reports of Democratic deaths were greatly exaggerated - that people would come to their senses and not vote - yet again - against their own best interests. But they did, whether they believe it now or not.

After a day or two of catching breaths and turning off the media clatter that consumed us before and immediately after the voting ended Tuesday night, we try to examine the ramifications, especially the depth of this touted revolution. Does it really run as deep as its celebrants believe? Or will history come back to bite them in the ass as it has after so many of these so-called political overhauls have. 1910, 1938, 1946, 1974, 1994, 2006. History is rife with midterm backlashes against sitting majorities and/or Presidents of the time only to see the public mood invariably swing back two years later to re-elect those presidents to a second term.

A week will have gone by when, the governor's race recount scheduled and some perspective having actually set in, we bat around the fallout and prospects for the coming Legislature – as well as the future – especially in light of the coming redrawing of our eight Congressional district boundaries and those defining our legislative districts.

TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with former and present officeholders and the one observer of recounts to publish his own book about it. Join us Monday morning.

After years of "professionalization" and “medicalization” of the entire parenting process from conception through delivery, many families, say, women, are opting for a simpler method, in the home with a successor to the old days of midwifery, the modern, professional midwife, or licensed midwife, or doula.

The medical profession appears pretty unhappy over this turn of events and is arguing against home birthing for all the reasons medical intervention was introduced to begin with decades ago: it’s essentially the only really safe way to deliver and, in that setting, all the options for emergency deliveries are close at hand.

TruthToTell’s ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN explore with advocates from all sides of this controversy, much of which has landed in the halls of state capitols and in the medical journals, especially those of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologyand theAMA. But midwives and home birthing advocates have successfully pushed for laws allowing the home birthing of children and still have access to and coverage for emergency medical procedures and pediatric follow-up care for infants. LISTEN BELOW for this fascinating discussion.